Testing Tools for PHP That Developers Should Know About

by Ken Miller Tech Writer

Developing PHP is surely an important issue. However, that’s not all – you need to conduct extensive tests of the end product to scale its usability as well as efficacy under the most trying situations, stress and strain, before it’s made live, up and running. Now when we speak about testing, there are a number of tools that facilitate the procedure of evaluation or assessment.

PHP is a spectacular scripting language that is designed to build dynamic web applications. The language is rich with a large user as well as developer base. Because the language is an open source one, it is available on the net free of cost and without any difficulty whatsoever. Besides, the community of developers is immensely contributing to the enhancement of the user base on a regular basis by coming up with new features every now and then. As PHP is constantly developing itself and adding new as well as innovative features, when it comes to assessing this language, there is an ardent need of new as well as fresh testing tools so as to scale its efficacy to the fullest extent. Let us discuss some of the most effective testing tools that PHP developers should be familiar with.

Codepad

PHP web development, PHP web development services, PHP programmer

PHP web development, PHP web development services, PHP programmer

This is an online compiler or an interpreter, and is a tool that facilitates simple collaboration. Codepad mainly supports a wide range of languages such as OCaml, C, C++, Haskell, Tcl, Plain Text, D, Lua, OCaml, PHP, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Scheme, and so on.

PhpAsserUnit

This particular tool is actually a framework for unit testing that is based on jsAsserUnit. The tool is a specific type of a wrapper that works by following the assertion method that is found in jsAsserUnit. Hence, it provides a wide range of similar type or nature of functionalities, though it works in a separate environment of development.

PHPUnit

This particular tool is a framework that facilitates unit testing for PHP programming language. The tool acts as an instance of the architecture of xUnit for unit testing frameworks that had originated with SUnit and have subsequently become extremely popular with JUnit. This tool was invented as well as structured for the purpose of detecting the blunders or mistakes committed while coding and for fixing them quickly. Similar to other unit testing frameworks, PHPUnit utilizes a wide range of assertions for verification of the code unit behavior.

This particular testing framework provides the developers of PHP a unique solution, when it comes to doing TDD, by offering a precise solution for organizing, automating as well as writing the codes. Besides, incorporation of this particular tool hugely increases the productivity by saving a lot of time or hassle of manual testing of various features.

Simple Test

Simple Test is another extremely handy testing framework that is built around a number of test case classes. These classes are basically written as extensions of the classes of the base test cases. Each of these extensions is equipped with methods that in fact contain codes, specifically written for coding.

Spike PHPCoverage

Spike PHPCoverage is another highly effective open source testing tool that is specifically designed to measure as well as report the code coverage that the ‘test suite’ of a particular PHP based application provides. This particular testing tool is designed to record as well as instrument information of line coverage for any PHP driven script during run time.

Cucumber

This particular tool allows the developers to write down tests in plain and simple English and execute them in sync with other third party tools like Watir, Selenium, and Mechanize for executing the evaluation within a particular browser.

Though it is actually written to test ROR (Ruby on Rails) driven apps, it can also be used for a variety of mainstream programming languages like PHP, Java as well as Python. This would help you leverage the benefits of PHP web development.

We provide PHP web development services. If you would like to discuss with a certified PHP programmer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.